


Anon the Bright Hyperion

by betweenthebliss



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Backstory, Character Death, F/M, Poetry, Sunsets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthebliss/pseuds/betweenthebliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She learns to love the things she loses herself in. written for ineffort's 'big damn heroes' meme for the prompt "there are no sunsets in space".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anon the Bright Hyperion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mollivanders](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mollivanders).



When she is nine she discovers poetry, the thrill of secrets hidden in rhythm and rhyme, words that set her on fire from within. She declares herself a poet and scribbles verses on the back of old homework, blank pages in her notebooks at school, and as her feet pound the sidewalk between school and home with the horizon glowing red behind her, the words run through her head like _here lies one whose name was writ on_ water.

She reads and shivers at the pictures in her head, eats them up like candy, poems upon poems upon poems, and though she doesn't understand half of them she vows she will learn. She is thirteen and refusing to go home, the dull ache in her chest like a weight around her neck, Socrata's words like knives, like scars she can feel on her skin. She sits on the windowsill in Karl's bedroom tapping the ash of her cigarette on the grass below; she is looking at the sparkle of water in the distance and the way the pink-tinged clouds shift to darkening blue above, _the sunset swept / to the valley's west, you remember,_ and her hand rests on well-thumbed book of poems open on her knee, and her eyes slant up, heart already yearning toward the sky.

She learns to love the things she loses herself in. Words flow across the page, poison leached from her veins, pain forgotten, scars faded. White canvas suffused in color in the wake of her brush, dreams and desires and the fierce hope she cannot shake, that she is meant for more than this. Pleasant ache in her arm as she sinks the pyramid ball in the goal, strain in her muscles as she pivots, fights, no thought beyond foot here, shoulder here, elbow there, she shoots, she scores; now breathe. Sweet sharp pain at fingers twisted in her hair, teeth sink into her shoulder and she shudders apart, adrenaline crashing through her, a roar drowning out the voice that says her name. _I am fevered with the sunset, / I am fretful with the bay,_ and when the fever takes her she turns west, and runs toward the sun.

Zak circles her for weeks before he asks her out, and she is drawn to him as a meteor to earth. He teases laughter from her and she forgets to hurt, to rage, and remembers how to find herself by losing. She lets him press her down among the pillows, hands tight on her wrists; at the look on his face she forgets every word she ever learned for beauty, and he paints them onto her skin with his fingers and his tongue, loving her like art, like fire. They wake in the morning and she watches him greedily, wanting things she's never wanted before, wanting every part of him and everything he already wants to give her, _bring me the sunset in a cup,_ and he takes her face in his hands and promises he will.

Then she is watching his Viper explode, alone in a room with a screen and a remote hitting play, rewind, play, rewind, until someone pries it out of her fingers and she leaps up with her fists swinging. She knows it is only herself she hates, not only for killing him but for letting herself be fooled, for daring to believe such a thing as happiness might be hers. She doesn't have a name for the void inside her, and when she tries she finds the words have dried up, the paintbrush feels foreign in her hand. Her eyes, too, are dry when she shakes the Commander's hand, and she loses herself again in duty, the precision of uniform and salute and the folding of the flag. _The frost was on / a star burnt blue / we were warm, you remember,_ she traces the words on his coffin, presses her lips to the cool wood, and returns to stand beside his father, almost her father, some day her father.

Years later she is running again, the Arrow clutched tight in her fist, Karl's strong steps beside her. Each time her foot hits the pavement and the low-hanging sun flares across her eyes she feels more like herself, as if some part of her had stayed here unknown, unnoticed, until she stumbled upon it again. In her apartment the mandala watches her, the words of her younger self shouting at her across the silent room. She never thought to have that again, _methodically smoking my cigarette / every breath I breathe out the day_, and when Sam offers it to her it isn't like art or like fire, but it's _yes I said yes I will yes_ good all the same.

The sun is setting as they lift off from Caprica, and she presses her hand to the window as the pale sky melts away into pinpricked black. She remembers her promise, knows it will stay with her until she fulfills it, but she looks up at the sky in Athena's tomb and yearns for freedom, _to go also / through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar,_ to wherever the stars point, to the nebula and the eye and beyond, to somewhere that will finally feel like home.

Groundbreaking, barn raising, circle dancing, the sun overhead hot on the nape of her neck and the alcohol burns sweetly in her veins. The land is hard, this is no lush Caprican forest to shelter them, but it is theirs and it is beautiful and this is all: Lee's hands in hers, Lee's mouth curved in a smile, and he, and she, and they _ran into the sunset light / as hard as I could run_, and he screams to the sky that he loves her, and oh, this is everything.

She wants, sometimes, for him to do something, say something, say anything to prove that he remembers, that he cares; she wants to provoke him to it, _do you remember, o Delphic Apollo / the sunset hour by the river,_ but the silence stretches on for days, weeks, months, and she knows that he does. She has twisted the knife and he twists it back; they bleed, each in their separate places and their separate private hurts, and until they bleed together they will remain apart. His fist connects with her jaw and it stings with memory like an old bruise, a faded scar, and she can feel the stares (his wife, her husband) scoring her back like a whip, but the blood trickling from her mouth tastes like benediction.

Finally there is only one place left to run. The mandala opens below her and she hears Lee's voice break as he screams her name again. She wants to cling to it but won't, can't, always they are slipping through each other's fingers, _let me out some gala day / with implements to fly away,_ and Leoben and Socrata beckon her down into the storm.

When she returns later (_after_, they do not ask her _after what_ and she does not answer _after everything_) she is focused, burning with purpose, drawn tight like a bowstring waiting for an arrow. _The sunset swept / to the valley's west / and was gone in a big dark door of stars_, but there is no sunset to run toward, no course westward to light her way home.

Now there is only the cold light of a star, electric flashes within the maelstrom beckoning deeper, and the comet burning through her mind as it lights the way to Earth.

_on she flared..._

**Author's Note:**

> poems used : valley song by carl sandburg; the sea-gypsy by richard hovey; emily dickinson xxxix; in trouble and shame by d.h. lawrence; magic by edward j. o'brien; spoon river anthology by webster ford; kara's poem written on the wall of her apartment; last quote and title from hyperion by john keats. valley song has always reminded me of kara, and if you've read dan simmons' hyperion cantos you might understand my mental association of kara and dreilide thrace with the johnny keats cyborg, which is mostly where the idea of kara as hyperion came from. :)
> 
> and nickelmountain has done a wonderful job podficcing this, so if you liked it make sure you DL her reading and leave her kudos on it. you can find it here : http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/anon-bright-hyperion

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Anon The Bright Hyperion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/311992) by [nickelmountain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelmountain/pseuds/nickelmountain)




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